So I finally had a few minutes to finish my word association tally project that I was doing to see what students thought about school. I had students do associations about other topics such as summer, sports, family etc. However, this is the only one that seems appropriate for this blog. This is the results of the grade 4 students that I completed the activity with. Don't get me wrong there are some good words in there that are fairly large....learn, fun, friends. However, what hits you in the face is "BORING" big and bold right in the middle. I was expecting a "happier" graph from this group of students which leads me to my question.
Is school by definition "boring" for students? No matter what we do are the majority of students going to be bored? And what responsibility do we as teachers have in making it as "un-boring" as possible short of free for all game play not related to school?
How does a teacher balance content and boredom? How does a school keep a student engaged and interested (ie not bored) for 7 hours a day? Is it an unrealistic expectation?
Thoughts, please.....
1 comment:
I have mixed feelings about this. I think that to some extent, kids always say they are bored even if they are not. On the other hand, activities that they do outside of school are so engaging and so much more participatory, that in comparison, school is boring! On the 3rd hand (?), to some extent, we also need to teach kids to deal with "boredom" b/c many times in life (at home and at work)they will have to deal with "boredom." It seems that no matter how much we work on differentiating and collaborative learning, kids just are not stimulated enough. Maybe they need to milk the cows and clean the barn before they come to school!?
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